I've had too many days off the last 10 months to appreciate another one yet. I am especially perturbed that MLK Day is one. I'm a northerner and a non-Christian. There were no "whites only" signs or facilities where I grew up. Washington DC is in the South. The march on Washington didn't impress me, southerners and a handful of New York Jews protesting in the south about mistreatment in southern states. Led by someone whose manner of speech was Southern Gospel Preacher, which is a style I still have trouble taking seriously.

The suburban NYC neighborhood where I spent my first 14 years was all white. There were no minorities at all, no Asians, no Blacks, no Puerto Ricans. Some of that was due to real estate agents redlining, but it was mostly because the tracts were under a VA program, and WWII had segregated troops. And probably also not many non-professionals could afford to buy a house there. Our neighbors included the owner of the local Chevy dealership, a few aerospace engineers, a Disney artist and an opera star. Mostly Jews and Catholics, which was another form of discrimination, I guess.

When we moved to Seattle, the neighborhood's demographic was proportional to the city as a whole. About 15% Black, 5% Asian, the rest white. Not enough Jews to merit a percentage. Catholics went to the private school, mostly. Seattle had a nasty racist past, but it involved Chinese before and during WWI and Japanese internment in WWII. That was all in the past by the time I moved there.

And my reading of history is MLK was a voice in the wilderness, but the real reason for whatever meager civil rights improvements there have been in the south since his time came from JFK, RFK and the threat of overwhelming armed force from the Federal government.So how did I spend my boring day? Well, I took in the garbage bin at around 9 am - they were early today. As planned, I did some gardening, pulled up a vast mass of Bee's Friend plants. Those things grow like wild, a wide splay of fern-like leaves on thick branches which fall over under their own weight and travel along the ground like vines. First round was clearing them from the carport garden where they were choking a salvia plant and some mums, and all three aloe plants.Second round was the front garden, clearing them from around and on top of jasmine, yarrow and bird of paradise as well as a couple of garlic and rosemary plants. I also pulled up the netting which was keeping the blackbirds from digging up the border stones, now that the birds have mostly moved across the Bay.

Note to self: when pulling up weeds near a rose bush, mind the thorns. Gave me a chance to break out the betadine and a long band aid.

Watched season 1 episode 2 of Sherlock. Again way too much time in the dark. Also watched another episode of To Tell The Truth. That one was on Tivo, and had the skip ads feature. Ditto the episode of Shark Tank.

Breakfast was a banana and walnuts. Lunch was Tai Pei combination fried rice. Dinner was falafel in a pita pocket with cole slaw dressing, and quinoa on the side.

Checked the rat traps, one had sprung, but I wasn't able to get it to reset, so I think it sprung on its own. Took in the recycle bin around 2.

Attacked a "to do" and changed all the B&W scanned images' date stamps to something resembling the actual dates they were taken. In Thailand I was still in the habit of labeling my negatives with the year-month-roll# (24 or 36 exposures per roll), and when I scanned them, I named each photo year-month-roll#-frame#, but the file date was the date I scanned them. Did this both for OCD and because Google Photos files images by file date when you upload them.

I need to do this to all the slides as well, but that's tougher because when I had them scanned they were mostly out of order. Long story.

Watched season 1 episode 3 of Sherlock. More scenes in the light. Yay. I do not like the way they portrayed Moriarty.

John Dean was a fan of Nixon's as early as 1968, when he volunteered to write position papers on crime for Richard Nixon's presidential campaign. He was associate deputy in the office of the Attorney General the following year, and then promoted to White House Chief Counsel in 1970. He was deeply involved in Watergate and the cover-up. Up until Nixon fired him and he turned state's evidence, he was one of Nixon's biggest fans. I don't consider anything he says about any politician to be worth the electrons it is carried by.